Returning to Cannes after eight years, Paweł Pawlikowski took home his second Best Director award. Fatherland marks the conclusion of his unofficial trilogy exploring post-war time and memory. In 1949, Thomas Mann visits his divided homeland. True to its title, the film is a story about Mann as a father and about the land of Germany itself. Visiting both West and East Germany, Mann gives speeches advocating for, "one good Germany, humanity, life, and love," yet his idealistic rhetoric rings hollow to the people of a fractured nation. Meanwhile, around the same time, his son Klaus commits suicide. Though unrevealed, the relationship between the father whose sexual identity is suppressed, the daughter striving to conceal it, and the openly gay son cast a dark shadow across the film. In his twilight years, Mann stands caught between the sorrow of a land striving for hope and reconstruction, and the mourning of an unforgiven son. Following the director’s previous work, Bach is once again featured in the ending. Bach’s music, acting as a divine touch comforting a man confronted with the collapse of faith, brings forth an outpouring of tears. It is a miraculous 80 minutes.
Paweł Pawlikowski was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1957. After studying literature and philosophy at Oxford, he began his career in film as a documentary director at the BBC. His narrative feature debuts, Last Resort (2000) and My Summer of Love (2004), each won a British Academy Award (BAFTA), establishing him as a rising talent in British cinema. Returning to Poland to complete Ida in 2013, he made history as the first Polish director to win the Academy Award for Best International Feature, cementing his name on the world stage. Cold War (2018), inspired by his parents′ love story, won the Best Director prize at Cannes and earned three Oscar nominations. With his latest film, Fatherland, which follows the journey of Thomas Mann and his daughter, he completed a historical trilogy stretching from Ida through Cold War. The film brought him a second Best Director award at Cannes in 2026, breaking his own record. Weaving turbulent history together with personal stories through a restrained style has become his trademark. Having started out as a documentarian, he now stands among the leading auteurs of European cinema.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
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